1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a data receiving apparatus, a method and a storage medium therefor, and more particularly to a data receiving apparatus, a method and a storage medium therefor adapted for use for data processing in television broadcasting receiver adaptable to data broadcasting reception, capable of receiving, displaying and reproducing data broadcasting contents in which for example characters, images, sound etc. are multiplexed.
2. Description of the Related Art
The data broadcasting has conventionally been operated in the ground wave television broadcasting, and is being broadened to the satellite-based digital broadcasting. In any of these data broadcastings, the data are broadcasted by superposing with a broadcast wave. In the receiving terminal, the broadcast wave is received and the accumulated data are read into a personal computer or an exclusive terminal and are displayed by a general WWW (world wide web) browser software or an exclusive browser software.
It is now anticipated to provide a new service by rendering the aforementioned data broadcasting service receivable not only by the personal computer but also by the television receiver. More specifically, by providing the television receiver with the receiving function for the data broadcasting and the browser software, even the user without the personal computer can easily browse various information and there can be provided a service for displaying information, linked with the television program, by characters or by images.
As an example, there is being proposed a new news service utilizing the data broadcasting. In this service, news images etc. are recorded in advance in the storage device of the television receiver and a data broadcasting image consisting of characters or images is provided as “news items” to the user, and the image of a news item selected by the user for example through the remote controller is reproduced. Such system allows to provide a conventionally unavailable new service enabling the user to view, at any time, the news program that has been observable only at predetermined times or enabling the user to only view the news item desired by the user.
However, in case of providing the television receiver with the receiving function for the aforementioned data broadcasting, a somewhat larger font is usually used in order to improve the visibility of the characters. As a result, the amount of character information that can be displayed at a time is naturally reduced, and, it is only possible to three to five news contents for example in the aforementioned news service and it is difficult to display many news items together with abstract and photographs.
Although it is conceivable to display the information that cannot be displayed within a single screen by scrolling or by page switching, but such method imposes the user to execute additional operation and cannot be considered adequate for the user who is not used to the operation environment of personal computer or television games.
Also the convenience to the user can be increased by printing the useful content of the broadcast program or the data broadcasting on paper through a printer, thereby enabling the user to watch such content afterwards. In such case, it is conceivable to connect the television receiver with a video printer for capturing and printing the image displayed on the television receiver, but, since a large font is generally employed in order to improve the visibility of the characters as explained in the foregoing, the printed characters inevitably become large and there can be exploited the advantage of paper which generally provide higher visibility of characters in comparison with the television screen.
In consideration of the foregoing, it is now conceived to broadcast, together with the program broadcasting or the display data in the data broadcasting, print data such as more detailed image data or character data related with such broadcasting in superposition, and to execute printing with such superposed data, but such system is associated with the following drawbacks.
Firstly, the user is unable to easily recognize when the print data are transmitted during the program viewing, so that the user is required to execute cumbersome operations in the course of the program viewing in order to confirm the presence of the print data. Also in case the print data are transmitted in the course of program viewing, the user may be unable to recognize the kind of the transmitted print data, so that the optimum preparation for printing may not be possible. Also the user may be unable to recognize the volume of the data to be printed, so that the optimum preparation for printing may not be possible.